“Squaring up.” — This process is called “squaring-up,” and consists of making a network of squares which cut up the study, and map out its lines and proportions, and make it possible to be sure that any part of the original will come in the same relative place in the copy no matter what the size may be, and at the same time leaves the actual laying out of the thing to freehand drawing.

The process is a very simple one. You mark off a number of points horizontally and vertically on the study. Make as many as you think best — if there are too few, you will have too much of the study in one part; if too many, it makes you more trouble. It is— not necessary that there be as many points one way as the other; make the number to suit the lines of the study.

Draw straight lines across the study from each of the points, keeping them carefully parallel, and seeing to it that the horizontal lines cross the vertical ones exactly at right angles. These lines cut the study into right-angled parallelograms, [241] which may be squares or not according as the vertical lines are the same distance from each other that the horizontal ones are, or not.

Number the spaces between the lines at the top, 1, 2, 3, etc., and at one side the same.

Now if you square off a part of your canvas with the same number of spaces at the top and the same number at the side as you have done with the study, and keep the relation of the spaces the same, you can make it as large or as small as you please, and you can draw the outlines within those squares as they fall in the study, and they will be the same in proportion without your having the trouble of working to scale. The squares furnish the scale for you, and the proportion is not of the study to the picture, but as the vertical spaces are to the horizontal, in both the study and the picture.

By numbering the squares on the canvas to correspond with those on the study, and noticing in which square, and in what part of it, any line or part of a line comes, you can, by drawing that line in the same part of the corresponding square on the canvas, repeat the line in the same relation and with exactness, while still leaving the hand free to modify it, or correct it.

In this way the simplest or the most complex, the largest or the smallest study sketch or drawing may be accurately transferred to any surface you please. [242]

CHAPTER XXV

KINDS OF PAINTING

WHY not recognize that conviction, intense personal attraction to a certain sort of thing is the life of all art. How else can life get into art than through the love of what you paint? A man may understand what he does not love, but he will never infuse with life that which he does not love. Understand it he should, if he would express it; but love it he must, if he would have others love it.

You see it is not the thing, but the manner; not the fact, but what you can find in it; not the object, but what you can express by it. “Un chef d'œuvre vaut un chef d'œuvre” because perfect delight in loveliness found in a small thing is as perfect as perfect delight in loveliness found in a great thing. And still life uninteresting as a fact, may be fascinating if “seen through the medium of a temperament.”

Don't let the idea get into your head that one thing is easier to do than another thing. Perhaps it is, but it is a bad mental attitude to think so. And even then, you may find that when you have [243] worked out all that its easiness shows you, some one with better knowledge or insight may come along and point out undreamed-of beauties and subtleties. And are they easy? To see and express the possibilities in easy things is the hardest of all.

Classification. — Divide paintings into two classes, — those representing objects seen out-of-doors, and those representing objects in-doors. This is the most fundamental of all classifications, and it is one which belongs practically to this century. Before this century it was hardly thought of to distinguish out-door light from in-door light.

Some of the Dutchmen did it. But it is only in this century that the principle has made itself felt. It is this which makes the difference of pitch or key so marked between the modern and the ancient pictures. It has changed the whole color-scheme.

An out-door picture may be still painted in the studio, but it must be painted from studies made out-doors. It is no longer possible to pose a model in a studio-light and paint her so into a landscape. It was right to do it when it was done frankly, when the world had not waked up to the fact that things look different in diffused and in concentrated lights. It is not right now. You cannot go back of your century. To be born too late is more fatal than to be born too soon. [244]

Whatever kind of picture you take in hand, remember that what distinguishes the treatment of it from that of other pictures depends on the inherent character of it. That the difficulties as well as the facilities in the working of it are due to the fact that it demands a different application of the universal principles. Don't think that landscape drawing is easier than that of the figure because smudges of green and blue and brown can be accepted as a landscape, while a smudge of pink will not do duty for the nude figure. It is only that the drawing of the figure is more obvious, and variations from the more obvious right are more easily seen.

You must study the necessities, the demands of treatment of the different sorts of subjects — see what is peculiar to each, and what common to all. You must find to what æsthetic qualities each most readily lends itself, what are the subtleties to be sought for, and what are the problems they offer. [245]